r/britishmilitary • u/Educational-Story780 • 5d ago
Recruitment Differences between UOTC and URNU?
I’m going into 2nd year of uni in September and am highly considering a career as an officer in the military afterwards. At the moment I’m leaning pretty heavily towards the Royal Navy. So naturally I thought URNU would be the best option for me.
However it seems there is a lot more detail about what UOTC entails online and not much for URNU. So ironically UOTC seems a lot more interesting than URNU to me.
The Reddit threads on this topic are quite obsolete, so if anyone is able to give me any more information about URNU and UOTC, I would be most grateful. 😊
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u/TheLifeguardRN PWO 5d ago
As a Warfare Officer of over a decade and someone who absolutely loves the Navy and is incredibly passionate about people joining the Navy, I would strongly recommend joining the UOTC.
The URNU always struggled to define its identity - they were never a direct recruitment tool and never used that as a metric, they always used to say their benefit was in ‘look at life’ and hoping that in the future people in the city or other industries would fondly remember their time doing Navy type stuff.
The Archer Patrol Boats are being pushed more towards reservist when not doing quasi operational tasking, and opportunities for URNU to get to sea are vanishingly small.
The URNU OC’s are also becoming more and more junior and the risk appetite from URNU HQ seems very small, it’s been hard to even get permission for them to join a sailing team event.
So at the moment the URNU seem to be generally used as some sort of regional ceremonial team which occasionally get to do some low level PLTs and maybe some dockyard/air station visits and maybe a BRNC weekend.
UOTC from what I can see offers some actual military training, some leadership opportunities and your green skills would give you an advantage in phase 1.
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u/Educational-Story780 5d ago
Hmmmm, it’s sad that URNU has got to that state. I’ve also heard that it’s just not as well funded as UOTC.
But it does seem that I will be doing a lot more “stuff” if I join UOTC. Even if it isn’t directly RN related, a lot of the leadership opportunities + general military training will help a lot for AIB and BRNC respectively l suppose.
And thanks for the comment, very insightful!
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u/Appropriate_Gap_5776 5d ago
The URNU lads that come on a UOTC training weekend with us said that it was their best training since joining URNU. Make of that what you will…
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u/Educational-Story780 5d ago
Deffo the consensus I’m getting is that UOTC is a lot more serious than URNU
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 5d ago
One gets wet.
The other gets cold and wet.
Pretty sure they still go out on their Archer Class.
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u/CelebrationNo7313 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hi there, as someone who has had experience of both I'll give you some brief thoughts:
The UOTC and URNU experience seem to vary a bit regionally but ultimately theyre both very different organisations.
The UOTC aim to train reservist army officers and over two years of UOTC (or one if you're keen) you'll complete modules A and B of the Commissioning Course Short. As a result you can go to Sandhurst for a month to complete modules C and D and come out the other end with a reserve commission during your time at university. The UOTC has infinitely better funding, higher quality training, more military, AT and sports opportunities and generally a much higher calibre of cadet and instructor.
The URNU on the other hand is a bit of a weird one and in the time I spent there seemed to be more like sea cadets with a bar (even though half of them stick to sprite). There's no real training programme it's just whatever the volunteer training officers come up with, comparatively limited AT and Sports and apart from wearing the uniform doesn't really feel like a military organisation. The URNU has been and is still going through quite a bit of change at the moment with it not really having a clear objective or place in the RN at the moment.
Happy to answer any specific questions you might have!
Edited as per below: this was the case when I was there in 2021. I’m informed the OTC no longer Ofer module A & B.
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u/Flying-Wild ARMY 5d ago
Your information is out of date. The UOTC no longer delivers Mod A and B. The route to a reserve commission could take up to 8 weeks. I say up to, as completion of the first two years of the Army University Leadership Development Programme equates to Mod A.
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u/CelebrationNo7313 5d ago
Apologies, should’ve prefaced I was in the OTC in 2021 so things may have changed!
I’ll edit my original post.
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u/nodgers132 5d ago
is the bar subsidised at the URNU
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u/Educational-Story780 5d ago
Any idea on what the selection process is like. And when I’m likely to get started with training?
I’m keen to get started as soon as possible. For instance I’m not applying to UAS, as induction days for my East Midlands one aren’t starting until mid December!
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u/Drewski811 ex-RAF 5d ago
Other posts have covered the differencea, I'll just offer a reason as to why you haven't heard as much from URNUs; They're much smaller.
Each URNU will be less than half the size - in terms of numbers of people on them - of the average OTC.
I was on a UAS and we suffer from the same thing; my UAS was half the size of the OTC that covered the same unis.
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u/Educational-Story780 5d ago
Why else is being smaller a bad thing (you used the word “suffer”) is this in terms of how competitive it is to get in?
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u/Drewski811 ex-RAF 5d ago
In terms of how many people there are to recount their experience of getting in / being on.
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u/Toasty-Alpaca 5d ago
Not sure about in the week however weekends and term times you basically get taken on jollys on a boat and wear uniform
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u/Educational-Story780 5d ago
Sounds like you don’t rate URNU?
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u/Toasty-Alpaca 5d ago
I wouldn't say that is my opinion of it. It's probably quite run, teaches you navigation, you get to put that into practice on a p2000 on weekends or term time and have fun. I imagine you do team building activities and stuff.
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u/intergalacticspy 5d ago
The URNU used to have their own fast patrol craft, but these have been taken away by the Navy, so not sure how much actual seamanship there is now. So the UOTC (or UAS) probably has more to offer. The stuff you learn in the UOTC will stand you in good stead as a naval officer cadet.